Monkey talk

Yesterday V responded to her pappa's question in Swedish, "What does the dog say?" with a "woof." This was the first time we realized that she understood the question in Swedish as well as in English. I thought her daddy would weep with joy to hear that little "woof." It's amazing to see how much emotion is tied up with a native language.

We now have lots of evidence that she understands words in both English and Swedish. Of course there is no evidence as of yet that she realizes they are two different languages.

The other surprise yesterday came when V was eating a banana. I said to her, "You're a little monkey!" V said, "Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh." That's what a monkey says, of course--everybody knows that. Apparently she has learned the word monkey already, without me even noticing!

More than just a woof

Today V has officially graduated from "woof" to "dog." She says it very well! She LOVES dogs.

And here is one more exciting language-related thing from today: I asked V if she wanted to read books, and she turned to the bookshelf and pointed to her own stack of books. I had no idea she knew the word book.

If you're vavoom and you know it

Today's little experiment involved singing the "happy and you know it" song. I sang it in English, and I was surprised that V clapped her hands at the right time, because usually it is her dad who sings this song to her in Swedish (I am sure he appreciates me reporting about this :-)).

I started wondering if she really understood the words in English, so then I started singing random stuff like "If you're va-va-voom and you know it va-va-voom." Sure enough, V clapped her hands in all the right spots. This points to a couple of things: 1) music/intonation/rhythm trumps words at this point 2) wow, we must actually be able to more or less carry a tune!

Tick tock

Today V's babysitter confirmed that she doesn't seem to understand any Finnish yet. That makes sense.

In other news, today V has been working on her aspirated p's, which come out sounding like "puh, puh, puh." She is working on the sound she hears in words such as apple, lamp, etc. She is also doing a lot of raspberries today.

We have just looked at a clock together for the first time, and she is really enjoying whispering "tick tock, tick tock, tick tock."

Here's something interesting about her semantics, which I understand is typical: today we saw our neighbor's cats, and V repeated again and again, "Woof, woof, woof." Just like all food was "bread" for a long time, it seems that a smallish animal that you can pet is a dog.

The mammas and the pappas

Yesterday was the first day when V officially said mamma. I was putting her down to bed and she didn't want to go down yet, so she let out a pathetic and whiny "Maaaammmmaaaaa!" Now the word is firmly etched: she has used it already several times this morning.

She has already been saying dadda for a while, maybe a couple of weeks. This is not random; this really is what she calls her dad. She also knows what pappa means, she just doesn't say it.

Other new words in the past couple of days are apple and uh-oh.

I have to write this just because I think it's funny: Yesterday V was with us for our brunch group, and she spilled a bit of milk just as the server set it on the table. When the server bent down to wipe it up, V started patting her on the head and smiling, as if to say "I'm sorry."

Her most useful word, by far, continues to be bread. She uses this word to her advantage at restaurants, cafes, the dinner table, etc. It's a word that really seems to pay off for her; that is, the girl gets lots of bread.

flowers and dogs

V points at the flowers on the table when her father says, "Var är blomman?"
When I ask (in English of course), "Do you want to play with Ildiko (her friend who lives upstairs), she points at the front door.
She says something that sounds like banana. For two days now, she has been saying mamma. This morning she said something that sounded like dog.
It's amazing how fast the words are coming out now. She seems to be producing at least two new words a day.

Still 11 months

I think V may have said her first sentence yesterday. Is that possible?

Here's the situation: V's favorite word is "bread." She loves food, so every possible thing to eat is "bread" -- everything from bananas to cereal to water. She also likes to point at everything and says, "there," or at least that's what I like to think. It sounds more like "der."

Yesterday we came back from a long day that involved several hours on a train. We stopped at the grocery store on the way home and I bought some bananas and whatnot. The bananas were in my shoulder bag, and on the way home Vera, who was very hungry, kept pointing and saying, "There's bread."

V's first sentence! Or at least fanciful thinking on my part. At any rate, it is interesting to contrast this with her sister's first sentence in English.

V's older sister was just about to turn three when I met her. At that time, she spoke Finnish with her mother and Swedish with her father. She lived most of the time with her mother. When I entered the picture, I spoke Finnish with her at first, but quickly changed to English. This caused V's sister some frustration, but we soon moved past it, and, one year later, I remember very clearly when she uttered her first full sentence in English. We were staying at a very rustic little cabin near the sea, and I asked her "Where's your daddy?" She responded, with a funny little twinkle in her eye, "Daddy's ----ing." I was so proud of her first fully formed, grammatical English sentence! And, at age three, she had a full understanding of potty humour. Funny girl.

My husband hates that story.

11 months

Poor little V, how was she to know she would be born to a linguist? Not a linguist who knows much about language acquisition, nor multiple language acquisition, but a linguist nonetheless. Many of the books we have on multiple language acquisition are unabashed case studies of the author's own child(ren). In keeping with tradition, I feel it is my duty to report in some form, somewhere, what V is doing at what stages. And here you have it.

V has just turned 11 months old. The languages to which she is systematically exposed are Finnish, Swedish, and English. Her mother (that's me) is a native speaker of English, her father is a native speaker of Swedish (he's bilingual, actually, in Swedish and Finnish, which is a story unto itself--but let's not talk about him right now), and we live in Finland. V has Finnish speaking relatives, friends, and babysitters. I speak English with my husband, he speaks Swedish with V and his other daughter (she doesn't live with us fulltime). We speak Finnish to our dog. All of us have a basic understanding of all three languages that are spoken in our home. Except for the dog, that is.

I would say that at this stage V is exposed to English 75% of the time, Swedish 20%, and Finnish 5% or less.

That's the backdrop. So here are the most interesting bits I have observed so far. V's comprehension of Swedish and English is already quite high. She responds to such questions in Swedish as "Var är lampan?" by pointing up at the lamp. She responds the same way to the question in English: "Where's the lamp?" She responds to "V är duktig" by clapping her hands. (It means that she's a good girl. :-)) She responds similarly to "where is...?" questions in both languages (ie, "Where's Daddy?" "Where's Mommy?") She understands basic commands in English, such as "Give Mommy kisses," "wave bye-bye" and "pat the doggy." I'm not sure at this point what she understands in Finnish, if anything. I'll have to ask her babysitter.

In terms of production, most of the words seem to be in English. V says bread in English, and also bröd in Swedish--or so it seems. She says both pappa and daddy, but she doesn't say mamma (although she knows what it means). Other words are pat, tickle-tickle, and woof (as in "what does the doggy say?").

It seems quite clear, then, that she has command of her stop consonants (p, t, k, b, at least). Her vowels probably still require a little bit of imaginative listening.